It is well-known to incorporate sponges and other compressible cleaning materials into cleaning implements for cleaning floors, walls, and other surfaces. Sponges and other pads absorb cleaning fluids, spilled fluids and the like until the carrying capacity of the material is reached. When that occurs, fluids are no longer absorbed, can be and often are undesirably redeposited on the surface to be cleaned, thus necessitating the removal of excess fluids from the pad. This is typically done by compressing the pad to expel the excess fluids.
Many conventional cleaning implements therefore include a means for compressing the pad and removing excess fluids. However, such conventional means typically require two hands to operate. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 3,727,259 to Wilson describes a mop which is held in one hand while a lever is pulled up by another hand to draw a sponge head having a biconvex cross-section through a pair of rollers to compress the sponge and expel excess fluid. Similar devices are disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,196,488 to Barry, 4,333,198 to Vosbikian, and 4,481,688 to Graham.
Conventional hand-held cleaning implements are difficult to operate with a single hand, or are not usable for a wide variety of cleaning tasks. For example, the cleaning device disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,893,369 to Johnson requires two hands to wring. That disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 2,741,787 may permit the user to wring the device with a single hand, but is intended for cleaning dishes and would not be suitable for other tasks, such as cleaning floors or counters.